"I a.s.sumed that he was relying on your judgment and taking your tips."

"Why? How so?"

"Because he has bought so much land alongside of yours."

"Where?"

Barbara was surprised. "I--why, I supposed you knew!" After a moment of hesitation she said: "I think I'd better keep my mouth closed. Just the same, he couldn't have done better than to follow your lead. That is the first compliment I ever paid you, Henry."

"I've paid you enough. And I do believe in you, 'Bob,' but I'm not the flattering kind. He's a great ladies' man. I wonder if he is going to make me jealous."

"You? Jealous? Coming from Wichita's most emotionless banker, from the cold county Croesus, that speech is almost a--a declaration." Miss Parker laughed frankly. "Why, Henry! My haughty little nose is turning up--I can feel it. But, alas! it proves your insincerity. If you had faith in my judgment you'd pick up this snap."

With some hesitation the man said: "We're in deep, 'Bob.' Awfully deep!

And things haven't gone as well as they should, lately. It's temporary, of course, but it would require an extraordinary effort at this time to take on anything new. That's the worst of this oil game, it takes so much money to protect your holdings. It doesn't pay to prospect land for the benefit of your neighbor; the risks are too great. Gray has been pretty attentive to you, hasn't he?"

"That's a part of the man; he is attentive to everybody. I have received more candy and flowers and delightful little surprises than in all my short, neglected life."

"I didn't know you liked candy."

"I don't. But I adore getting it. The thought counts. I don't care much for canaries, either--I have such bad luck with them--but he sent me the dearest thing from New York. A tiny mechanical bird with actual feathers. And it sings! It is a really, truly yellow canary in a beautiful gold cage, and when you press a spring it perks its head, opens its beak, flirts its tail, and utters the most angelic song. It must have cost a fortune. Couldn't you _love_ a man who would think of a present like that?"

"Hm-m! Could _you_?"

"Oh, I'm joking, of course," "Bob" said, seriously. "We are merely business a.s.sociates, Mr. Gray and I, but he has the faculty of taking his personality into his business, and that's why I know he is bound to make a great success."

"Some day," Nelson said, with an effort at lightness, "when we have finished with this infernal oil excitement and the fever has subsided, perhaps I'll have a chance to--well, to play ladies' man. It won't last long--"

"I'm sure it won't," laughed the girl. "You'd never make a go of it, Henry."

"I mean this boom won't last. These fools think it will, but it won't.

While it does last, we busy men have no time for anything else, no chance to think of anything, no room in our minds--" The speaker stared gloomily into s.p.a.ce. He shook his head. "When a fellow is worried about important matters, he neglects the little things."

"To me that is the tragedy of this oil excitement. It devours everything fine in us. I wonder if the 'little things' of life aren't, after all, the most important. Mind you, I'm not hinting--I don't want your attentions--I wouldn't have time for them, anyhow, for I'm just as feverish as anybody else. But in the midst of all these new concerns, these sudden millions, this overnight success, our ambitious schemes, we are forgetting the things that really count. Gentleness, courtesy, love, home, children: they're pretty big, Henry. Candy and roses and yellow canaries, too. But "--the speaker rose, briskly--"I didn't come here to talk about them; I came here to sell you an oil well. Sorry you can't take it."

When she had gone Nelson sat in a frowning study for some time. So, it was not all a bad dream. What could be Gray's object in buying acreage adjoining his? Was it faith in his, Nelson's, judgment, a desire to ride to success on the tail of his enemy's kite, or did it mean a war of offsets, drilling operations the instant a well came in? More likely the latter, if the maniac really meant what he had said. That promised to be an expensive and a hazardous undertaking on Gray's part; that was playing the game on a scale too big for the fellow's limited resources, and yet--it might be well to study the maps. Yes, and it was like Gray's effrontery to pay deliberate court to "Bob" Parker, knowing his rival's feelings toward the girl. Another insult! The upstart certainly possessed an uncanny dexterity in p.r.i.c.king armor joints. But what if Gray were in earnest? "Bob" had become a wonderfully desirable creature, she was the most attractive girl in Wichita Falls--

It was a thought that had not previously presented itself to Henry Wilson, and it disturbed him now. He was glad, indeed, that he had sent to Ranger for that field man.

In and around the office of McWade & Stoner these were busy days, what with a couple of new wildcat promotions and a well going down on semiproven ground--that lease which cornered into the Nelson holdings, and to which Stoner had called attention. It had been easy to sell stock in the latter enterprise, and now the deeper went the hole, the higher rose the hopes of the promoters. Stoner himself was directing operations, and he had named the well "Avenger Number One."

To-day he and his partner had been listening to Mallow, who concluded an earnest discourse with these words:

"Nelson and her are pardners in one deal and he's stuck on her. If anybody can put it over, she's the one."

"If he buys that well it'll be the biggest laugh this town ever had,"

McWade declared.

"Buy it? A hundred and fifty barrels in the heart of settled production for seventy-five thousand? I bet he'll buy it."

"Think the boss will stand for that kind of a deal?"

"Why not? They can't hang it on him, and Heaven knows I'm honest."

"He said 'nothing crooked'--"

Mallow snorted. "Say, I bet you believe in Santa Claus! Gray's a great man, and what makes him great is that he does his own crooked work."

Stoner was inclined to agree with Mallow's measure of their a.s.sociate.

"That's how I got him figgered. His honesty talk didn't go far with me, and I don't believe he'll kick at anything. He's willing to pay any price to break this banker, but you can't bankrupt a feller unless you rip his coin loose; you can't _ask_ him to please loosen. If we make a well of the Avenger we'll force him to shoot maybe a hundred thousand right away, and that may cramp him for a while; but suppose he makes the turn and hits it like we do? We've made him that much stronger, haven't we? Gray plans to keep him spending faster than he can get it in, and that's all right--if it works, but if Mallow can bilk him for seventy-five thousand at one fell swipe--Well, I'll bet my best gold tooth that the boss will stand the shock like a man."

"I think you've both got Gray all wrong," said McWade. "He's too smart to be crooked."

This was a statement so absurd that Mallow proceeded to riddle it. It was, upon its face, a contradiction, for none but smart men could be crooked, and the laws of logic proved the converse to be equally true.

Stoner sat in frowning silence while the argument raged, but he broke in finally: "I've always wanted to pull a real salting job, just to show how easy it is to gyp the cagy ones--not an oil-can job like this, but something big. This looks like the piscological moment."

"Lay off, I tell you!" McWade cried. "We're a legitimate firm,' solid as Gibraltar and safe as a church.' That's our motto, and we've got to live up to it. I came into Wichita on the roof of a Pullman; I'm going out in a drawing-room. Me and sin are strangers."

"Nothing sinful about my idea, Mac. One fall or two won't break Nelson; we've got to spill him hard. If we can pick up a few pennies ourselves in the process, why, that's legitimate. The dealer is ent.i.tled to his percentage, ain't he? Now listen. Everybody's getting set for a big play over in Arkansas, as you know--salting away cheap acreage and waiting for some of the wildcats to come in. Well, last year I had a tool dresser from up there; nice boy, but he got pneumonia and it turned into the 'con,' so I took him home. He's back on his farm now, coughing his life away and doing a little bootleggin' to keep body and cough together. He's got a big place, but it's all run down and so poor you couldn't raise a dust on it with a bellows. It would be a Christian act to help him sell that goat pasture for enough to go to some nice warm country where he'd get well and they couldn't extradite him."

"Of course, if you've got a scheme that is perfectly safe," McWade ventured, charitably, "and our bit was worth it--"

"I been thinking we might help the boy sell that farm to Nelson."

"How?"

Mallow, too, was curious. "Nelson's lungs are healthy; he wouldn't cough a nickel unless the place had oil on it."

"I meant to tell you it's got oil on it. Best indications I ever saw.

There's a drinking well, only the water ain't fit to drink till you skim off the 'rainbow.' Then there's a wonderful seepage into the creek. You can see the oil oozing out from under the bank, in one place. Certainly is pretty."

Stoner's hearers were intent; they exchanged puzzled glances.

Mallow was the first to speak. "Come on. What's the joker? I ain't saying you'd murder the guy for that farm, but if it's as good as that he'd of died of the plague or something, and left it to you long before this."

"In a way, I'm getting ahead of my story," Stoner continued, imperturbably. "The oil ain't actually visible, but it will be if, when, and as, Henry Nelson gets ready to buy it."

"Easy enough to pour oil into a water well, I suppose, but that wouldn't fool a child. As for salting _running_ water, a creek--show me."

"There's a lot for you to learn in this business, Mallow. The point is, can we lay Nelson against a bunch of acreage like that?"

"You could lay _me_ against it if it looks like you say it does,"

McWade declared.

"This bootlegger, being half dead and non compost mentis, would help put it over with a man like Nelson; he'd set him in a draught while he was signing the option. I'll guarantee the seepage to last for a month, even if he has the well bailed out every day, and the creek will carry oil for half a mile."

"Would your one-lunged friend know how to play in?"